glassfish: Quick Start Guide

another quickie on this glassfish freebsd combo:

the slick web based admin gui tool works like a charm. got reminded again how spartan the resin am accustomed to compared to to SJSAS. :D

as FreeBSD is not officially supported by glassfish, am really just surprised it worked. was worried since I spotted a few .so files unpacked, JNI dependencies perhaps. anyway lets see where this goes.

glassfish: Quick Start Guide

hmmnn...

managed to run glassfish on top of FreeBSD 6 using the mac os x binary. tested the main page and it does seem to work. not surprisingly since os x userland is based on FreeBSD also. however, haven't tested yet the other glassfish components. if its 100% java and doesnt do jni calls, it just might hum along properly. will try installing liferay on top of this setup and hoping it performance would be a bit better than my earlier G4 experience.

Liferay Forums

Finally managed to setup liferay on bookah. I must say am really impressed with the polish of the UI. AJAX-ish and even has a cute analog clock. Major gripe was the default war file which has a hard coded context so you are forced to set it up on the ROOT if you are using resin.

On the other hand, its a bit slow on a G4 iBook, even the 1.5G of ram didn't help. Will try it on the Glassfish and SJAS 8 and see if there are noticeable speed improvements on the same machine.

Will try my luck running it on my FreeBSD 6.1 home machine (pikah). Specially, since I managed to squeeze some time a few hours ago to setup the brand spanking new (an offshoot of thee free distribution license recently granted by Sun) diablo jdk (1.5).

Next step is to learn the portlet specification. Liferay is also EJB-ish, which I hadn't been using for more than a year now. Last project I with EJB was still with the old EJB 2 spec (in which xdoclet is a pre-requisite to be be bearable). Also curious how it was architectured, and how it compares to the domain model driven design I had been using of late.

Liferay - Home

I had enough of Infoglue and so I asked the lazy web once again for an opensource cms solution for my bicolano.org project. Primarily because I was trying the hibernate/postgresl version. Am currently not in the mood to debug the thingy just to make it run.

Liferay seems fun! And it even has a few themes. That would help a lot for backend developers like me who doesn't have the artistic skills to make a masterpiece out of blank HTML.

Here's to hoping Liferay and me would get along just fine. Its also a good excuse to dive into the Portlet API (JSR-168) specification.

Here we go again.

Interactive Earth: Download Shape2Earth Beta 2

Got a couple of PH related shapefiles at home. Could be a nice after work hobby project. Except ironically it will only run on windows. Although MapWindow GIS is opensource. Hmmmn... Seems to be requiring dotnet 2.0 sdk too.

What I don't have is a windows installation. Bummer. Got to find the installer that came with the lappy. Its burried neath' those Ubuntu/FreeBSD CD's last time I checked. heh.

JAJAH - web-activated telephony

Good friend winston in HK notified me of this free 5 minutes call without registration. According to him works as advertised. Hmmmmn... This smells like skype killer-ish.

And I like the tag line "FREE.YOUR.VOICE".

Shiny!

Eclipse.org home

Oh yeah. Version 3.2 seems a tad more snappier on the mac than the previous version.

Updated my Eclipse Vi plugin and life is again sweet. Satokar your the man!

Perceptions

Perceptions

Sometimes you can't help but feel sad when some people draw conclusions without really knowing the root of the problem.

Last week was all about perceptions and growing a few white hairs due to incompetence. Some people really can't get a clue as to where my kindness ends and my limited patience for incompetence and unprofesionalism begins.

Oh well, its a monday. Here's to hoping no major WTF's these week.

Huzahhh... Goos fraba fraba...

In-ear for cheapskates

In-ear for cheapskates
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Yesterday, I was lamenting that my Treo earphones broke. And even asked the lazy web what would be an inexpensive in-ear alternative aw my ears weren't designed for regular earphone designs (i lack a docking station). The cheapest would be the hard to find Sony Fontopia EX71 (street price 2k - 2.8K) or the readily available Philips SHE9501 (street price 1.4K - 1.7K). Now, even at that price, it would still have a hard time convincing my budget conscious wife.



Now whilst wandering around Circle C waiting for the girls having their hair trimmed, I stumbled upon this in-ear with a brand-i-dont-know-because-its-written-in-frackin-whatever. I asked for the price and the kind sales lady said it can be had for 300 pesos only! And I could test drive it! (yucky I know, this being in-ear-shove-it-in-your-ear-canal design). And so I tested it and it sounds quite good. Way better than my previous earphone. And so I put on my cutest smile and haggled till the mesmerized sales lady finally agreed to sell it for 200 pesos. Now at that price, I won't be required to undergo the justification process.



One major gripe tho is that it only comes with one size earbud. And it doesn't come with a spare pair. Other than that, its sweet music.



Treonox

- rockin in Circle C

shop.brando.com.hk - Sony MDR-EX71SL Earphone

Frack! My good ol' SE 2-in-1 earphones just broke. Right earphone doesn't work anymore. And since its an old model, stores don't carry it anymore, sigh, that was a steal for P400 bucks. Although apparently, Norah Jones voice and other jazz type music pushes the poor thing to the limit, complains in the form of crackling noise.

And so I asked the lazy web which in-ear noise isolating earbud is best for a cheapskate like me?

And thus it answered.



This seems to be the most practical, quality, best bang for the buck, in-ear for the moment. Its also getting good reviews. The only problem is where to find it locally. Sincerely hoping that its priced closer to reality.

Java Practices: Immutable objects

Defensive copying. Just like defensive driving, can save you from a major head break.

You really have to stick this in your head. Parameters being passed or returned from methods. Else you suddenly have unpredictable objects acting more strangely than the last zombies from the resident evil movie.

There is a big difference between:

public Date getDateOfDiscovery() {
return new Date(fDateOfDiscovery.getTime());
}

and the wimpy version of above:

public Date getDateOfDiscovery() {
return fDateOfDiscovery.getTime();
}



And likewise should always remember that "setters are evil (tm)".

E.g.

You have a domain object named account. And naturally you want to do insert some good old strategy pattern to implement the behaviour of your debit method. So that you have:

account.debit();

Which encapsulates all the technical wizardry known to man to securely do a debit transaction. After which, it stores it to a transaction table associated to your account object.

Now if you have a setter for that transaction table like:

account.setTransactions(Set _transactions).

The crooked descendant of green lantern coder can just as easily do something with the transactions table without going thru the carefully crafted debit function mentioned previously.

So thats our lesson for today, Defensive Copying, and Setters are Evil.


codingnox
- (bitten by the un-defensive copying bug...)

WriteRoom | Hog Bay Software

When you are a writer and you just dont have enough will power to fight back procastination. then Writeroom just might be the tool you are looking for.

Distraction free writing. For developers, distractiong free code writing. Although this Writeroom app isn't that suitable for code writing. A full screen terminal with Vi is a handy substitue.

Nowadays, I too try to to turn off all apps not needed to do the task at hand. Unitasking sometimes helps a lot in getting things done (GTD).

Pacquiao Vs. Larios

Pacquiao Vs. Larios

Let the games begin!

Go Pacman!

Eclipse RCP Meets Spring: A Perfect Thick-Client Match

Yummy!

Google Checkout Tour

I remembered blogging something is bound to dominate the e/m-commerce space.

Oh well, here comes google checkout!

Wonder if it accepts credit cards from the Philippines? Will it be the end of Paypal? or like Visa and Mastercard co-exist peacefully?

Exciting times to be in the e/m-commerce industry!

And for cellco's out there, I kid you not, the next wave is on the data highway. Start offering practical data plans!

Its not in the box, its in the band baby...

Yahoo! Messenger for Mac

probably long overdue.

but hey, this new yahoo messenger mac client is pretty shiny!

First night of SCJP review thoughts

It seems to be a bunch of lively and jolly folks. Kudos to the O & B team led by Charo, Calen, Ealden and Owie for organizing the review. Looking forward for the next review session.

As I have said during the initial getting to know part, its more of the curiosity that drives me to try to take an SCJP exam. Passing the exam would be an added bonus and needless to say, justify the pocket pain inducing price of the voucher (3rd world dictates that you should make every penny count). Here's to hoping I do pass, as the O & B folks were telling us that most Java developers already doing software development had statistically lower passing average than those greenhorns fresh from learning Java as a language. Emphasis on Java as a language, as opposed to Java as a developer tool. Anyway, at the end of the day, its the journey and not the destination thingy.

On the other hand, I think we took the long way back, took more or less 30 minutes to get to the Ayala MRT station. Something the treadmill back home would probably be jealous. Will try the Pasong Tamo-Magallanes route next time. Else, not only do we get to review the syntactical beauty of the Java 1.5 specs, we also get to loose a handful of pounds (baby fats) in the process.

Waiting neath the gloomy sky

Waiting neath the gloomy sky

With a cup of rice, a handful of tocino bits and sunny side up fried egg (rare) and last but not the least a cup of coffee.

Will pass time before the review starts. Meanwhile, its chow time.

treonox
- somewhere in salcedo street.

Skype - The whole world can talk for free.

On another note, a co-worker of mine as well as my loving wife got an email from skype announcing a free 60 minute call added to their account. We tried it and called a relative on a cellphone in bicol. It worked! although predictably just a few minutes (5 minutes i think). Obviously the 60 minute applies to calls made to the US and other VOIP friendly teritorries.

Some observations on this Skype out thingy:
1. The call made to a landline (Digitel) in Bicol was a bit garbled, and delayed. You have to do the walky-talky talk in order for you to understand each other.

2. The call made to the cellphone (Globe) was a bit better, and was just like a regular cell phone to cell phone call. We could even hear those tricycles whizzing in the background.

Anyway, it was fun while it lasted. Nothing beats free. Hopefully Skype will soon let you call any landline for free, just like what they are doing now for the US and Canadian teritorries.


Time to go to bed. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

New GPRS rates

New GPRS rates

Am probably the last one to know, a friend of mine who recently got a treo told me that Smart is now currently charging 10 per 30 minutes of GPRS use.

This makes loggin on the internet via Smart prepaid SIM a bit more practical. Assuming of course that you don't get disconnected often, as each reconnection would reset your usage and you will be charged 10 pesos per 30 minutes again.

Hopefully Globe would introduce a counter scheme asap.

If the cellco's still don't get it, the next big cashcows will be killer apps that rides on the data pipe. Put your data rates down, and let em rip.


treonox
- looking for a hand me down Smart prepaid SIM

Back to Basics

Back to Basics

Tom will be the start of the free SCJP review offered by the good folks at Orange and Bronze. Looking forward to rattle my brain and meet new friends.

Might be nice to blog about this review thingy. Hmmmnnn...

Metro Manila Makeover: Naga 3D

Way Cool!

Naga in 3D!

Google is pretty shiny! for opening their products for end user hacking.

Mauragon ining mga kahimanwa na nag-gibo kaini! Saludo akong marhay!

Talented Bicolanos now on the rise!

Weblog of Peter %u201CAlarmnummer%u201D Veentjer - Blog about Spring, Acegi, concurrency and other JEE related subjects.

Interesting thoughts on DDD and a bunch of other interesting stuff for enterprise java dev.

Mike Dunn's Weblog

For the sake of making my domain model richer, I hereby succumb to the convenience brought by DependencyInjectionInterceptorFactoryBean. This doesn't address new objects not fetched from the database. My workaround is to add a newInstance method in the DAO. The newInstance just calls in the same bean that all objects taken from the database used.

for example:
newInstance() {
return ServiceLocator.getImpl("Instance");
}

This requires getting your hands dirty with spring framework CVS as this code currently lives only in the sandbox. And yes, this interceptor relies on springs autowire capability, keep that in mind when naming those beans to be injected into your domain object.


Anyway, if you still want rich domain models but don't want AOP or Dependency Injection via an interceptor, there's always a Service Locator pattern to save your day.

for example:

domainOjbect.doSomething() {
iShouldBeAutoInjectedService = ServiceLocator.getImpl("SpringDefinedBean");

iShouldBeAutoInjectedService.doService();
}

Be wary, that this somehow makes your domain object dependent on service locators. This also works well at scenarios where the auto injected service needs to be defined only during deployment time. Whether or not that is good thing, YMMV.

Why do you need rich domain models? Well, it just goes back to the aim of OOP. Objects that pretty much can do things by themselves. Rich domain objects helps a lot in mapping the meatspace domain problem to your application. It also allows your domain model POJO's to naturally follow design patterns principles, since it is now more than just a bunch of getter and setter methods to access a database fields (a.k.a. anemic domain model). You can inject stuff that allows you to add behaviour to your objects.

The Gadgeteer - Sony Vaio VGN-UX50 uPC

Sexy device!

Its screaming for a better interface tho. Should have a more PDA or Front Row like interface.

That said, wouldn't mind Santa dropping one the chimney.


nox
- got to have a chimney first...

Just Another Blog: Dependency Injection OR Service Locator in Domain Objects with Spring and Hibernate frameworks

This probably summarizes one of the nagging problems of making your domain objects rich.

Coming from a C/C++ background, one of the things that I missed when I started doing business applications in Java (or any business type application for that matter) is the richness of object oriented programming. Objects are lively, as in the case of a point object where you can "tell" it to move via point.move(x,y).

For business domain objects like an account for example, I would like it to be able to tell it to debit an amount via account.debit(amount). This doesn't come naturally for these types of applications since when they are revived from storage they only contain data.

For now, I do the "assembling" in the DAO objects and create new objects via an ImplementationLocator, which is basically a service locator that uses spring underneath. e.g. for the account DO, ImplLocator.getImpl("Account").

Hopefully in the future there would be a more natural way of doing this. Am still skeptical with AOP.

Setting up an iTunes server in FreeBSD

sweet!

sweeettt!!

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttt!!!

although in the end i settled for mt-daapd. even the album art and equalizer settings are retained.

this could increase my free disk space by a good margin. yay!


don't know why...
- (Norah Jones streamin' via mt-daapd)

Google Video Player Download

Shiny!

Thanks google!

Love, is you.

Love, is you.
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Love is real, real is love...

I think its time the whole world wide web to know how much I love you.

You may never read my blog, but the fact still remains.

No amount of technology can measure my love for you in its purest form.

You alone can stare right thru my soul.

You alone can inspire the geek in me.

You alone can bring immense joy to me and our two bundles of joy.



Love, is you.



Treonox

- janelletic

:: lisondra.net haraya project ::

a good friend way back the PDI #forum days, is now into context analysis of filipino poems thru his hiraya project. actually its more than context analysis he is after, more like finding where local poets get their out of this world inspirations thru mind numbing lexical algorithms.

what boggles the mind tho, is that "libog" is not on the list. "laman" is at the bottom.

WTF is wrong with our current local poets today?

Freud would not be so proud.

OSNews.com

I like the author mentioning he has no need of video and photo editing/management among other things, as the reason he switched from OS X to a pure Linux setup for his Powerbook.

Makes me wonder if he has a life? I mean at this day and age if video and photo management isn't part of your digital life (add the proliferation of mobile devices with photo and video capabilities) then you should seriously consider having one. If I have to prioritize the data on my hard drive, those home made videos and every day photos certainly is on the top of the list.

Anyway, the article is not an "effective way" to advocate the linux desktop to a mass audience. In fairness, it didn't claim to be one.

X-Men 3

X-Men 3

Off to watch X-Men 3 with the whole family!

treonox
-Good times! :D

F/OSS Thoughts

Found this in my looney bin. A couple of weeks old but posting it here for future reference. Bookmarking or taking a snapshot of my mind to review a year (or years) after for those Back to the Future (tm) moments :D.


On F/OSS Advocacy:

Advocating FOSS arrogantly  as something so technically superior than commercial alternatives is idealism on the wrong side of the coin. This might work in geek circles, but is not the nicest or effective way of reaching a broader audience.

Not minding existing solutions is bad too. The way some FOSS projects is headed, humbly acknowledging and learning from existing solutions is a great leap forward wider FOSS adoption. Technologies such as Cairo, XGL/Compiz, etc., are just a taste of things to come. The FOSS desktop is finally maturing to the point of mass usability. On the server space, we see efforts to simplify administration, this is an era where we see more focus on automation, tuning and monitoring. A good example would be to see recent developments of Theo's OpenBSD gang and FreeBSD dtrace port. 

Look at OS X, *lots* of FOSS components in there. An interface that even Grandma can use, yet pop the hood and you have something there to titillate the geek in  you. Recent FOSS desktop developments acknowledges this facts, clearly seeing the value of hiding the technical mojo from the casual user, and yet still have the terminal in case the user wants to get down and dirty to expand his horizon.

Technical superiority alone is not an effective marketing tactic. There is more to FOSS than technical superiority. 

OpenSource.Nokia.com - Mobile Web Server

Excitingggggg times!!!

What does this mean? Mobile devices can now be reached via URL! It doesn't matter which network it belongs. The device is now part of web!

Do you wanna??? Do you wanna???


Imagine the possibilities! Doing and http post/get on the device via its url and sending data to the application on the device.


Good times to be in the mobile industry.

Team Building

Back from our team building session held in Antipolo's Camp Explore at Mount Puro. Really, REALLY nice place. You sleep among the trees. Our cabin was at the level of the trees and designed with lots of open spaces. Air flows freely at its spacious loft and food served was again really good!

I realized that one of the best things that team building sessions can bring is that it makes the facilitators state the obvious in a manner that all you won't get offended. Its quite different when its you or your colleague explaining the same things to you. There is often personal friction involved if say you try to mention to your co-worker the value of teamwork, or trust and all the other basic things that makes a high performing team.

The place was really awesome. Hope I can have the same haven when my life is nearing the sunset. That would be a nice place to spend your not so tender years.

BSD News

Hooray! DTrace for FreeBSD port now working!

This just made my day!

TNPI - Do it Yourself .mac v2

Should find time to do this hack one of these days. Another alternative could be iFolder, but it still has no running port yet on FreeBSD. Besides, iDisk is relatively sweet and nicely integrated with the rest of OS X apps.


Find, find time...
Forever, would be fine...

OLPC - a photoset on Flickr

Sweet! Hopefully this thing also gets to our local countryside. Hoping too, that it certainly brings one of the greatest equalizer of modern times (the internet) to areas that need it the most.

And its running a stripped down FC5. Shiny!

Apple - Nike iPod

Shiny! shoes. It that kind of gear doesn't inspire you to run, nothing else will. hehehe.

Mailling List annoyance

Subscribed to PLUG a few weeks ago to get the feel of the local linux community. As with other local ML you can't help but notice members of the list posting with half a page worth of signature attached to their post. You would mildly understand if this are just the usual quotes or PGP keys. But it boggles the mind why some have to include half a dozen of the internet domains they are affiliated with. Worse, each domain includes its own tag line, motto, etc., whatever. And thats not even mentioning untrimmed replies :(

Hopefully these type of posters will be considerate enough in the future to think about us digest mode loving peeps.

Commercials, Piolo and Me

Overheard during a commercial break.

Me: "Kahit ganyan lang na katawan, ok na sa akin".

Wifey: "Marami ka pang bigas na aalisin".

Seriously needing an exercise routine hacked into my sedentary meatspace world. Anybody selling a rather unused good quality treadmill? The last time I jogged around the village involved a scary encounter with a bunch of malnourished four legged mammals. Clearly, not the type I would consider as my best friend.

YouTube - Fast OS Switching on MacBook

OS X, Windows and Ubuntu YouTube Video. Check out the "switching" action. Man! Those new mactels are looking rather sweet and rockingly handsome, performance wise!



Oh Santa, I promise to be really nice this year. A MacBook Pro or a MacBook (black if possible) will really make a nice Christmas gift. :D

myGlobe - Configuration Guides

Finally was able to figure out the right WAP proxy settings for Globe so that I can test our WAP apps on my Treo, instead of annoying someone elses phone. The one mentioned on the Globe site configuration guide has the wrong port for WAP.

Use instead this:
Proxy Address: 203.177.43.214
Port: 8080

Yes, you can browse wap sites using the Globe Internet settings on the treo but has two issues:

1. You are charged via the regular GPRS rates of 0.25/kb. Unlike WAP over GPRS which is currently at 0.15/kb.

2. Your application on the other end would not get the phone number of the user accessing your WAP app. Not an issue if you are just displaying content, but really handy if you are doing customized apps (you want to store user preferences for this type of apps).


Oh the things you can do with WAP. It might not be suitable for "masa" type apps where SMS is still the medium of choice. But rockingly awesome for mobile to machine (M2M) applications. Added bonus, most mobile phones of late (even the inexpensive ones) are GPRS and WAP enabled at the very least.

Another bonus, WAP is capable of displaying images like a barcode that can be read by other machines. Independently mobile ideas for the mobile indie in you. :D


treonox
- am WAP'ed and am happy...

The Lenovo Tapes

Frackin' shiny! if those are true. :D

Google Web Toolkit - Build AJAX apps in the Java language

Way to go Google! Shiny!

That's love, developer love... :D


Update:
I spoke too soon. Windows and Linux only. Nothing for Steve Job's fanboys. Not happy.

Java Now Redistributable by Distros; Sun to Open Source Java - OSNews.com

This is good news! F/OSS distros can now bundle the JDK!

It just keeps getting better. :D

Apple - MacBook

WOW! Just one word. WOW!

Dual core, glossy wide screen, mag safe, iSight, remote, to name a few. This is digital mobile nirvana. And finally a black version is available!

Price is not bad either. PC laptops on that range doesn't even compare. OS X and that kind of hardware at that price is unbeatable.

Anyone wants to buy a less than a year old 12" iBook G4 1.33ghz?

Shame on you Apple for creating such a thing of beauty and tormenting previous model owners.

screen - The Terminal Multiplexer

Spoiled by the Gnome Terminal application's tabbed shells, I was looking for a similar terminal with support for tabs on OS X. The default Terminal.app doesn't support tabs. A friend adviced using iTerm, but found it rather slow and unresponsive.

So back to tab-less Terminal.app. Then I remembered this command line gem called "screen" which I used a while back before being addicted to Gnome Term. It lets you multiplex your terminal, giving you the same tab functionality within a single terminal session.

Happy screen multiplexing. Because in the age of enevitable multitasking, life needs more than one active terminal session. :D

jkOnTheRun: More Sony UX pics

Sexy and shiny!

Nicer still if it runs on an open source OS like maemo. :D

Monday Blues

Monday Blues

Frack! I feel light headed. I should remind myself not to drink green tea at 12am . Else be subjected to that weird feeling when your body is dead tired, your eyes shut but your mind still trying to map out meatspace problems to their domain model counterpart. Worse, its automatically refactoring the damn domain model to manageable design patterns.


treonox
- mobloggin' on a southbound train. exquisite headeache seeping thru my sleep deprived brain.

Sticker Happy!

Sticker Happy!
Originally uploaded by nocs.

The iBook's surface makes it rather conducive to put stickers. It can be easily removed when needed and doesn't require much effort to clean up the adhesive residue. What sucks tho, is printer ran out of ink. Well... we live to stick another day :D

Sunflower

Sunflower

Flower power eh?

For the past two weeks, I feel like a sunflower missing the sun amidst the rainy season.

Tommorow, will probably be hugging them to no end.

Yay! can't wait!

treonox
- moblogging on north bound train

Persistent Domain Objects Pattern.

PDO vs DAO.

I think the DAO method is much more closer to meatspace scenarios. Assuming we have a robot factory.

Pseudo in PDO:

Robot find/get Robot123 and be that robot.

Pseudo in DAO.

RobotManager find/get Robot123 .

I think the machines responsible for finding and extracting Robots from the factory be a different entity. Its more simpler that way.

RobotManager can be an interface and might have varying implementations. This answers the need to decouple the database specific implementation.

Rapleaf -- Portable Ratings for Buyers and Sellers

Shiny!

Reputation server. Hmmmnnnn.

Credibility of the reputation would be rather be the hard part.

iPod-ish whirpool washing machine

iPod-ish whirpool washing machine
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Since the family is still enjoying the mildly cooler weather of Bicol, I'm left to take care of myself here in Manila. For the past few days am really appreciating the simplicity of this washing machine. Unlike most automatic washing machines which tend to have a number of variable settings for speed, time, etc., complete with LCD's and ability to program your own washing routine, this whirpool model only consist of three big buttons and four led indicators. The three buttons are bred for a simple purpose: power, fast forward, and water level (full or half, default is full). For the most part you just toss your laundry inside, connect the water hose, add some detergents, put ample amounts of liquid softener and press the power button. The machine, soaks, wash, rinse and dries (you can fast forward to a phase using the other button mentioned above) your laundry without any fuss. I do the this before I go to bed at night and collect the clothes the following morning, sweetly ready for ironing.



And yet, behind the simple interface, make no mistake, its a damn effective machine. Its innovative design gracefully mimics washing the laundry by hand. Using a counter rotor pole at the middle, it emulates the technique of using friction to clean your clothes, just like manual handwash.



The point is, as nerdy as I maybe, loving the complexity of the enevitable tech driven lifestyle in the office, at the end of the day, I just want my washing machine to work effectively without me reading the user manual from time to time. Shift that perspective to the majority of computer users (obviously the non-techie outnumber the geeks greatly), they just want their computers to work and would love if they can simply do it without much fuss. After all, for most of them computers are just tools to help with their jobs. They would rather spend more time focusing on their primary job functions, than the complexity of the technology.



Tech shouldn't get in the way. Specially on laundry days. :-D

- treonox

village idiot savant: Unexpected conversation with Mom

Way to go. Pretty shiny! I like the "kid tested, mother approved part". :D

This is the opportunity for FOSS to really accelerate adoption. We now have the means to conquer the newbie walls. Unlike uhm, my floppy based encounters during the tender years.

As long as we don't have much of arrogant, out-of-sync-with-reality FOSS advocates to ruin the momentum, were in pretty good shape.

lawnormscode ? Blog Archive ? Freedom to Run Means Freedom from Complexity: An Argument for Running FOSS on Windows

This is highly relevant to the Simplicity vs Complexity approach in FOSS advocacy I had been talking about for the past few weeks.

Found it via slashdot. And as the poster commented, What good is good if it cannot be used? Without "simplicity" in mind by a FOSS advocate, it could easily be construed as a hard sell by the non-technical audience.

How can you effectively advocate FOSS as freedom to run a program, if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets?

It still boggles the mind why some people really want to start an advocacy with complexity, when there is an option to use simplicity. At the extreme, its like saying that FOSS is heaven, but to the newbies mind you are showing the gates of hell. Sigh... They don't just fracking get it.

Apple - Get a Mac - Watch The TV Ads

Frackingly hilarious Mac Ads!

Check it all out, from Viruses to WSJ!

ArticleS.UncleBob.TheNextBigThing

Picked this up from the PinoyJUG ML. This really drives the point home. Any developer who thinks otherwise is downright arrogant.

The best thing one can do is accept the fact, and do something about it.

SCIFI.COM | Battlestar Galactica

Frackin' season 2 finale. This aaaaaaa fracking awesome mini-series.

Oh yeah, I guess its inherently human that most of us learn our lessons the hard way. The politics in the story reflects exactly the complexity that any government must be facing. The complexity too of human relationships is vividly depicted. Not the typical good vs. evil stereotypes we often see. The philosophical arguments are difinitely relevant, and would likely be still be true in the near future. I also think this movie would make good ol' Freud proud. :D

We are all after all still human. Or aren't we all?

FOSS Advocacy: Idealistic vs Realistic

Nice its finally Saturday and have some time to spare to summarize my thoughts of the past days events which I haven't had the decent time to tend to. After reviewing what has transpired and was written, I think it would be best to shed some light to the matter. Not to mention a bunch of emails that I have gotten due to the write up, which goes as far as saying my views falls under "false advocacy". Good thing a good number of them was enlightened enough to see my point.

To begin with, I wouldn't go into great lengths to quote some people here. Aside from a thing called respect, I think doing that can easily be mis-construed as a personal attack. Much more name specific individuals or groups, as the aim is to constructively critique an alarmingly growing local perception or attitude in advocating FOSS. Besides, the sporadic number of white hair instances on my head reminds me that the basic principle: "Your freedom ends where my nose begins" applies very much in situations like blogs, where you are presenting your article to a public audience. In contrast to mailling lists where you are addressing the group or replying to an individual directly. While its fair to say you have the freedom to say what you want because its your blog, I guess it fairly applies when you talk about yourself. It's a different scenario when you quote other people.

Actually, its all about my ongoing observation on one of the major obstacles in widespread FOSS adoption (especially on the local scene), which is the need to enlighten the FOSS advocates themselves, that approaches/pedagogies MATTERS A LOT.

Lets brainstorm this a little. :)

The background:

Somebody communicated that there is an urgent need for a resource person for a 2 day Linux crash course. There was a suggestion that of that 2 day crash training, 1 day be spent introducing the unix shell and toolset on the premise that GNU/Linux core system is Unix. The audience/participants: selected officials from selected municipalities on a relatively agricultural region. For short, obviously the not so technically savvy. But perhaps have enough interest and willing to spend their precious time to know more about Linux.

And since from the start I had expressed my opinions to the group regarding the Simplicity vs Complexity approach in FOSS advocacy and implementation, that suggestion triggered the simpleton in me. I asked if the 1 day intro to shells or toolset would still be relevant. And explained that, would the case be that the audience are CS geeks, they might find CLI's (shells) naturally sexy. But in this case, the intended audience might find that a bit unattractive, get traumatized and probably get the wrong impression that FOSS is complicated and not meant for the non-techie specie. More so, spending a day for that, when probably just a sweep would do. And rather just spend more time on other FOSS components that would serve the audience's needs, probably currently served by commercial alternatives.

I also mentioned that this is a common mistake that I seem to observe. And that FOSS is on a state that it can be possibly used by the average user (like the target audience mentioned above). Also that it might best to show them its as easy to use as commercial alternatives.

Of course, I was just pitching in my thoughts as the event was obviously over, with the aim to have it as a suggestion to the group to take into consideration on similar events.


The rebuttal:

Not surprisingly, some did not agree on this common mistake. And pointed out that the mistake is advocating FOSS as a mere alternative. I agree on not advocating it as a "mere" alternative. I however do not agree on ignoring the fact that it is an alternative (a damn good alternative I might add). Arrogantly dismissing that the number of users whose current needs is served by commercial alternatives greatly outnumber those who are already on the FOSS pool (swimming or chillin'), greatly needs "A Grip On Reality (TM)".


Things to ponder:

WE must not forget the reason why there is a need to advocate something: We want to publicly recommend and inform other people of this thing we genuinely believe in. With that in mind you need effective strategies for your message to get thru. Yes, thats right, for greater impact and long term success the goal should be to lean on the side of effectivity rather than efficiency. And I think that focusing and taking into consideration simplicity as an advocacy strategy would be more effective than unnecessarily bringing complexity too early in the process.

Lets look at the difference between the two (effective vs efficient) thru some examples in reference to the target users mentioned above.

It would be EFFICIENT to cover just a little bit of everything of FOSS to this group of users. You discuss the plethora of available OS options, how CLI's can titillate the wet corners of the mind, the different ways applications are packaged and installed, different desktop shells (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Enlightenment etc), the sheer power to have your own web server running on your desktop and the things you can do with it, awesome selection of programming tools etc., etc,. After all, choice is good. This is the FOSS pool, made of technically superior high tech components than your previous commercial pool, entirely different. Efficient, because you covered a lot in a relatively short period of time.

It would be EFFECTIVE on the other hand to focus more on the things that the user would care about or would serve his current needs. Capitalizing on their existing knowledge of commercial alternatives and showing them what they can do on it can also be done with FOSS components. Hopefully, in an easier more better way than the user is accustomed to. This is the FOSS pool, you can still do what you were accustomed to on your previous commercial pool, an added bonus, if you take time to learn its features (the choice is yours) you will soon discover there's a lot more you can do with this pool without your pocket screaming for pain.


In summary:

There is nothing wrong with enticing users by showing them that FOSS has its simple side too, that is not a deception. Unless the advocate feels otherwise, or deep inside he really thinks FOSS has nothing to offer. The world is complicated as it is, you cannot accelerate adoption if at the entry point, what you are showing screams of complexity. Its by no means denying the user the freedom and potential of looking within FOSS. Its about bringing FOSS to the user in the first place so that he has the opportunity to see the potential within.

Neither it is wrong to show them that FOSS is an alternative. That is accepting reality. That is being humble. FOSS was made possible by standing on the shoulders of giants, which like it or not, some of this giants are powered by the commercial sector. Zealotry and bigotry should go to /dev/null as it poses the biggest obstacle in bridging the gap between FOSS loving techies and the non-techie crowd. Hence greatly hindering adoption.

I think FOSS advocacy can be more effective if we take these things into consideration. The learning curve doesn't have to be so steep. It wouldn't hurt FOSS to make himself presentable when introducing them to newbies either. Simplicity is the key.

Enlightenment

One of the things I realized this past few days:

Enlightening other people is really hard. Simply because some people can not tolerate the light.

Well that's reality I guess. No choice but to deal with it.

Different Worlds

Take control of your mind...
Because we are living in different worlds...

Arrived in Bicol

Arrived in Bicol
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Thanks to God we arrived safely in Bicol. Rainy weather here in contrast to Manila's scorchingly hot weather.



That was a fun trip except for the fact that the bus has weak air conditioning, and I have to fan Janro for the entire duration of the trip.



And yeah! The world looks good in green!

Bicol Here We Come!

Bicol Here We Come!
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Everybody seems excited. Natuloy din sa wakas :-D.

Isang tulog na lang...

It has been almost two years since I last visited Bicol. That is also equal to how long since I had a decent vacation. The main culprit is when I'm here in Manila, I'm having fun working, specially now that the products we developed for m-commerce a few years back (circa 2003) are slowly gaining adoption *globally*. Tracking down Beattie's blog, make me say "hmmnnn, thats exactly what we have been trying to advocate and developed a few years back!", and that has been getting more and more often as days go by. Makes me smile that whenever I meet those Telco representatives again, I can proudly say "We told you so!". Moving on...

The vacation would also be a nice opportunity to focus a bit to catch up on reading. I'm packing POJO's in Action and Head First Design Patterns (Some of those GOF materials are still foggy to me) to refresh my current perspective in application development and software design. Hopefully after this I can better face challenges with bookah on my hand and a better understanding of design patterns in my head and of course treodah to coordinate and manage them all.

Will likely have the chance to finally watch Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica and likewise advance Pacman's career on Fight Night Round3.

Another on my todo list is to meet with BiOS members on the region. The momentum is there, and hopefully be able to contribute back and help as much as I can.

Looking forward to visiting good old friends. Mindful that probably a lot has changed, but still possible that friendship has still retained some common grounds.

The fresh air would certainly be a welcome threat for my asthma, which has been frequent of late due to Manila extremely hot weather.

At the heart of it all would be spending quality time with the family. Rojan is really looking forward to go swimming at the beach. Janro would probably be happily contented that I get to spend more time with him. My lovey looking forward walking hand-in-hand at a moonlit beach. That means more hugs and kisses from these three! enough to recharge and come back refreshed and enlightened.


treonox
- moblogging underneath the andalusian sun

Yahoo! Go - Get Started on Your Mobile

This is really shiny!

Yahoo definitely gets it! Wonder if this would work on my wife's Nokia. While unlimited texting has surprisingly been tri-telco nowadays (thanks to Sun), applications that leverages the power of the Internet and combine it with richer UI's is definitely the way to go. Instant messaging via your mobile phone is quickly changing the way we communicate. SMS, primarily due to costs is currently suited mostly for local messaging. Instant Messaging (IM) on the other hand, can cross bounaries and is available across different devices (from PC's, PDA's, cellphones etc).

As data connection costs becomes less of an issue, this can also bring forth the rise of mobile web browser based applications which quite blends well with Sun's the network is the computer slogan. Meaning it won't matter much if your phone's processor isn't bleeding edge, manufacturers might as well focus on making better displays to accomodate mobile content. Mobile flash comes into mind, as well as AJAX, and a whole lot more! limited only by your imagination.

We live in exciting mobile times!

MailTags 1.2.1 - Meta Data Plugin for Apple Mail.App

Got a mac? A Folksonomist?

Then download MailTags! Allows you to tag your email. Its donation ware and damnably really useful. And just because organization involves more than just folders :D.

Shiny!

Grazr in Opera Platform - Web Applications Blog - by Web Applications

This is a nice prototype of a mobile RSS reader with an iPod like UI.

The only problem is doesn't fit well to places where the mobile user is charged per kb of bandwidth like the Philippines. What it needs is an offline, space shifting component like QuickNews. That means syncing (pulling your feeds) via an internet connected computer so that you take advantage of your existing net connection and only download wirelessly via your carrier when really needed.

Still, its a nice indication where RSS is heading: to the mobile device in the palm of your hand.

Exciting times...

Russell Beattie Notebook - $1,154.99 in Mobile Data%u2026 Ouch

Beattie is spot on, on this one.

WHY CAN'T CELLPHONE COMPANIES DO AUTO NOTIFICATION WHEN A SUBSCRIBER APPROACHES HIS CELL PLAN LIMITS?

Heck this is standard practice on credit card companies and banks, notifying in one way or another. Why can't cellco's follow?

I remember a while back when my company issued phone was stolen and unfortunately the thief was able to go way past the cellphone plan limits. Why on earth the credit limit wasn't followed boggles the mind. Are they doing this on purpose?. And yes, we were forced to pay the bill with a note that its a payment under protest, since we did report to Smart that the phone was stolen and the issue could have been handled gracefully if they automatically cut the service once the CREDIT LIMIT was reached. How hard can that be if they already had a system that monitors pre-paid credits and automcatically cut you off when you ran out of credits?

Another issue I can think of is those PC-to-Mobile text schemes that more often than not trick the poor recipient to thinking that he is replying to a regular phone number rather than a P2.50 per message VAS.

Sigh...

TheWeeklyRant.com: NEWS - Apple's BootCamp boots Linux!

Just hours(?) after hell freezed and Apple released boot camp. Some linux geeks managed to get Unbuntu 5.10 to work on those new Intel based macs using the boot camp software.

Hmmmmnnn...

[FreeBSD-Announce] The FreeBSD Foundation Announces Java JDK and JRE 1.5 Binaries for FreeBSD

Yay! Its official. FreeBSD can now come with JDK binaries (1.5) binaries. Hooray! Beasties rejoice! rejoice!

BSD Guides :: Doing Stuff With FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, & Mac OS X

Jon of BSDGuides was pissed off that www.bsd.ph was ripping off the sites content. From the site:

Site Rip-off
Posted by Jon on March 13, 2006 at 11:57:29 am MST

The popularity of BSDGuides continues to grow so much that people just want to rip it off. It seems the owner of http://www.bsd.ph/howtos.html does not have any creativity because they didn't even bother changing the format and stylesheet. I am not posting this to promote their site, but merely to inform you that BSDGuides.org is original in its content and strives to stay that way. I have no plans on informing the owner of their stupidity at this time as public humility should be enough.

Wonder who the owner www.bsd.ph is? The domain was registered by Chroot Inc. Copyright? Copyleft? I think the intention is good. Even if I have read Lessig's Free Culture, the public nature of the web makes the issue a bit foggy. Hopefully this can be settled soon.

How I Work: Bill Gates - Apr. 4, 2006

Interesting peek at Bill's digital workstyle. Three LCD screens, each with designated roles. His Tablet PC usage and how Microsoft collaborates internally using sharepoint. Wonder what Steve Job's digital workstyle is? That might make another interesting comparison.

On the other side Cringley's latest post tells us why he likes Paul Allen than Bill Gates.

Canon EOS 350D

My dream digital camera. Should be a nice companion for the upcoming bicol trip. Or nice tool for starting in digital photography... Ahhhh... Daydreaming... Seems forever out of reach...

Skype - The whole world can talk for free.

Just upgraded to the latest version. Still no video available. I don't have a webcam or an iSight, so won't be needing that much.

It does bring a nice touch: When somebody calls you, or if you make a call with skype, it automatically lowers the volume of iTunes, mutes it on the duration of your call, then gradually brings the previous volume back after you hangup.

Shiny!

Howto OSS iFolder Server - iFolder

Oh goodie! iFolder is now open source! This enables you or your organization to have your very own box.net derivative. Cool!

Welcome to HBO Asia!

They now removed the avantgo/pda version. Sigh... And wasn't even kind enough to provide RSS feeds. Instead resorted to a mailling list subscribtion model. Bummer...

NETGEAR - 802.11b Cable/DSL Wireless Router

Currently testing the netgear that came free (promo) with a colleague's new laptop (an Asus lappy from Villman). It seems to nicely cover the apartment and has some decent config options. Looks sleek and surprisingly I get a full bar on the 1st floor even if it only has one antennae and the unit is located on the 2nd floor on my makeshift SOHO. Fortunately the original owner has no immediate need for one, and I might get lucky and get a good discount for this thingy.

Oh well, currently happy unthethered :D. Still crossing my fingers that the connection won't be so flaky as reported by some customers around the lazy web. So far so good.

Ethernet Oldies

Since I don't have a switch/hub, and I can't justify to my lovey buying a Linksys WRT54G, I ransacked one of the old boxes where I knew I had a spare realtek ethernet card. Found it and plugged (surprised it still works!), it into the home server so I can at least configure it as a gateway gleefully doing the NAT dance. This still means no couch surfing and tethered living, but its better than nothing.

Still pissed off Bayantel DSL doesn't provide static IP's as they used to. Buy hey, still fortunate I was able to back off on that Smart Wifi connection. Bayantel's promise of a rebate for downtimes sends a message that this guys will hopefully move heaven and earth to manage service interruptions. Will settle for dynamic DNS solutions for now.

Ahhh.. the additional ethernet card also allows me to offload JUnit tests to that machine and still be connected. I also now have an excuse to update the kernel to FreeBSD 6.0 Release. Also, maybe its just me, but I get a kick out of having semi transparent terminal screens logged on another machine. Too bad the default OSX terminal doesn't support tabs. What a shame...

NewsForge | Interview: Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD

This guy has the ability to *really* stand for what he believes. My hats off to him. OpenSSH would not be where it is now, if not for the valiant efforts of the OpenBSD team.

Reading this interview reminds me that people are indeed strange, everybody is deranged. And the striking difference between advocating for software freedom, and meatspace freedom.

Fruity Thoughts

Yesterday, the taxi driver gave an interesting advice: "One of the key secrets in enjoying a healthy life is to eat whatever fruit thats in season.". His argument is that God made fruits seasonal for a purpose.

Makes perfect sense. Who would argue with Mother Nature and God's design?

So today, in addition to our traditional "Adobo Sunday" (TM), we bought a bunch of sweet mangoes and had a grand time eating it after lunch. Mother nature really knows best.

DesktopBSD

Finally a BSD variant aimed for th desktop crowd. Although it begs the question: Why does it have to be KDE?

I have nothing against KDE. It just doesn't feel right. The innovation seems to happen in the Gnome crowd. Oh well.

The magic that makes Google tick - ZDNet UK Insight

A nice article providing an overview how the Mighty Google search engine makes searching a household name.

A nice read...

Hot Weather

Hot Weather

Literary hot these days. Yahoo weather reporting 36C average the past few days. Am having Asthma triggers more often. I should try to change my routine to go out of the house earlier and take advantage of somewhat a cooler time to commute and likewise go home late to wait for the streets to cool off a bit.

This are the times I wish I had a car with good airconditioning. Or wish that somewhat live in a place a bit further from the equator. Or wish telecommuting is the current standard norm. But such is life...

The gameplan is to send the kids to Bicol, which has a considerably more cooler climate since its nearer to mountains, to spend the rest of the summer. That would cut down our electricity bill and the savings could prepare us for the the next school year this june.

treonox
- typing away on a north bound MRT train

Folksonomy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apparently there is a term for what I have been interested in for good deal of time now. It's called Folksonomy: a collaboratively generated, open-ended labeling system that enables Internet users to categorize content such as Web pages, online photographs, and Web links.


folksonomist nox
- thinking of ways to simplify things in his spare time.

Sun Grid Compute Utility

Fascinating! A step towards the "network is the computer" Sun has been saying for eons.

Looking into the future, it could be apparent that all that you would need to run your apps is a thin client terminal. Your applications run on Grid computers like this and data stored on your personal terrabyte drive. Your mobile device doesn't have to have the latest high end processors. Just good enough to process HD data perhaps? Sun is doing the commercial side of this industry $1/CPU-hr. Would google be able to offer a public free on-deman grid compute facility? What apps would you like it to run?

That kind of computing power would be handy for the RSS agents I have in mind. Or maybe, finally upgrade PAGASA's weather prediction capability. Reminds me of William Yu's presentation on cluster computing last year. Speaking of which, he has been actively blogging of late, check it out on my feeds list.

Exciting times! Moving on...

Hardcore eh?

There is an ongoing thread on the PinoyJUG mailling list regarding the members favorite IDE. Amusingly some showoffs seem to indicate they mainly code in Vi(m). Hayyy... Idealists on the wrong side of the coin.

WTF? What kind of projects are they doing? I have used Vi since circa 96, but use it mainly to edit text files on unix environments. But to use it for mainly for real Java development with a fair number of classes would be downright stupidly arrogant/ignorant. How can it beat code completion and refactoring? These folks doesn't have something called common sense.

If they really love Vi for its really simple and straightforward keybindings, they should try an IDE with Vi support (I use Eclipse with Satokars Vi plugin). That way they benefit from the features of a full featured IDE and get the good ol' goodness of Vi keybindings.

Had a nice weekend!

pre-weekend highlights
- Rojan graduated from nursery! Perfected all quarterly exams. Bagged a medal. Accomplished something that neither of his parents did at that age. We are so proud! Had a small party were everybody got a taste of my fabled spaghetti.
- Burned the midnight oil for most of the workdays. Re-designed the main app. Read thru the POJO's in action and Head First Design Patterns. Realized that am implementing the POJO facades the wrong way. Sigh, a developers world is full of foggy references. Complexity vs. Simplicity. More on this later. The fog is getting rather thick in this arena.

weekend highlights
- Fight Night Round 3! Assumed the role of Pacman. Took a beating from Morales on the first try. End-result of stupidly and stubbornly not going thru the training module first. After learning how to lean and parry and do quick jabs, and counter punches, was able to beat Barrera on the 7th round. Corrales on the 4th. Morales on the 11th. Wasn't too inclined to sing "para sayo" tho. Anyway, it was a great game! The texture mapped characters are not yet of final fantasy film category but good enough to recognize the players and have a believable game. Got to love the CSI'esue scenes just before your opponent or you goes down. The controls are easy to use. Really great game.
- Did some website cleaning. Did a makeover of the main mobileindie.com website. Ditched the planetplanet and replaced it with Gregarius. This is the closest thing to what I want my aggregator to be. I can group feeds together and have each group have its own RSS feed. Its also quite easy to add new feeds. Found and AJAX enabled theme and its looking really sweet.
- Ran context analysis on my blog. Results were rather amusing. The tag outputs: Blog, Blogs, Mobile, Indie, Music, Humor, Erotica, Gadgets, M-Commerce etc. I never explected my blog to be erotic, maybe the occasional mention of the wild elmo triggered the thing. All in all a good start for my pet project that will potentially titilate the wet corners of the mind. Got to do some xml digging.

Theocacao. This is probably the best looking blog I have ever seen. Sweetly clean and nice. Makes you literally feel your reading a book just by its appearance. Wonder if this iWeb induced? Of course this doesn't blend well with the monetizing your content crowd. It does win in the simplicity department.

Thats why Einstein is a genius. He gets it! Make complicated things simple but no simpler. Same reason why Apple is successful. Same reason why GNOME is better than KDE. Same reason why *BSD simple and consistent layout structure kicks linux in the butt from a SysAd point of view. Same reason why Ubuntu is rocking on desktop adoption. Same reason why lightweight frameworks like Spring in Java beat the old EJB shit.

Make complicated things simple == More likely chance of success

Move along writely, here comes ajaxwrite!



The look, feel, and functionality of Microsoft Word, in a completely web-based AJAX platform. Try ajaxWrite today, and experience first-hand how AJAX applications are changing the way the web works, and redefining the software industry.

hmmmnnnn...

The *network* is the computer.
- Sun

Brainshare, Winforms, MonoDevelop. - Miguel de Icaza



This Mono project is seriously rocking. It is even humble enought to admit that some ideas for the MonoDevelop IDE (IDE features are plugin based) is inspired by Eclipse's implementation.

Paypal Mobile launches? - Engadget Mobile


you can either text PAYPAL (729725) with the dollar amount and recipients digits (i.e. "send 10 to 2125551212"), or you can do it manually by calling 1-800-4PAYPAL (1-800-472-9725), which is obviously far less exciting. There isn't any official press release we could find on this yet, so caveat emptor, we don't know what (if anything) they're gonna charge you. Oh, and do especially mind your phone from now on, ok? As if using it as an e-wallet didn't scare you enough, now it's linked to all your bank accounts and credit cards.

This is great! Hoping they open up to PH. Wonder if G-Cash or Smart Money would resist assimilation? This is telco agnostic m-commerce. With the only drawback that it requires a credit card. But it would be great for B2B and B2C applications.

Take note of the sarcasm bit: "Mind your phone from now on. As if using an e-wallet didn't scare you.". While Paypal is a direct link to your account, G-Cash and Smart Money is indirect. Those two can be treated as mobile cash/debit cards so it lessens the risk a bit. The moment you allow reloading the e-wallet from a real account via mobile, the risk meter increases a bit just below the paypal model.

Once you get into m-commerce, you basically treat your phone with outmost care just like a regular credit card. That means reporting it ASAP when it gets stolen etc. I don't know if telcos still allow specifying the from field (ever got a text that contains a name instead of a number in the from field?), so be also careful that you don't show your pin to anyone who also happens to know your number. Same with credit cards you don't want just anyone who happens to know your billing address to also know your cardnumber and the digits at the back.

The good news is that m-commerce is now a reality nad slowly taking off. Who will emerge as the leader? Is it the new currency that will play a vital role in powering the next gen economy?

Its still a long way to go tho, access to the local m-commerce infrastructure needs some loving. Its still a hassle to convert from cash to e-wallet or e-wallet to cash. Also the typical counter/cashier scenario doesn't blend very well with the SMS based way of transacting with a merchant. Peer to peer payment (mobile to mobile) doesn't appeal that much to a dominantly cash based society where majority are poor. Remittance delivered via m-commerce inherits the infrastructure problem mentioned above.

The current way of doing m-commerce on the otherhand should match nicely with e-commerce type applications. I wonder why the current options are not focusing on that one? hmmmnnn...

m-commerce + e-commerce? the practical killer combo?


Some say, I'm a dreamer...
But am not the only one...
-John Lennon

Local Digg, or Digg pinoy style!

oKs! People-powered News & Links

Would anyone know when did this start? Wonder if this would still be relevant if sites like digg add country categories? or map the ip to country for each submitted story? hmmmnnnn....

Upcoming NOVELL desktop video. Really showing exciting stuff for Xorg based desktops. Yummy XGL!. I really like the Novell's lead on this one. Opensource desktop finally gets it! Its not just the fancy eyecandy anymore, its about time to harness the power of your fancy video card to improve the desktop experience. Other stuff show are improved mono apps like beagle (desktop search), F-Spot (photo management) etc.

I'm a fan of the Gnome Desktop. KDE just doesn't feel right. Gnome rocks harder! :D

CocoaLab has released a free copy of Become An Xcoder Book. Perfect for newbies like me. Covers XCode 2.0. Nice!

Man vs. Machine

Dexter (first name basis :D), commented that Migs is already working on meme aggregation, and asks if that is what I have in mind.

I think Migs is doing the Google News like approach, where an application does the uber-cool meme tracking. While mine is contemplating on a simpler Digg/Slashdot, social network'ish like approach. For a quick background, Google News selection relies on a computer program running on top of several machines. Digg/Slashdot on the other hand relies on reproductive-determinism-end-result (humans), to submit stories that they think the world wide web should care about.

Mine is just an online application that lets me create my own planets/blogosphere. Grouping the blogs I like and apply my own naming convention.

E.g.

Group 1 (will spit out an rss aggreate of feed 1 to 3)
- feed1
- feed2
- feed3

Group 2 (will spit out an rss aggregate of feed 4 -5 )
- feed4
- feed5

...


It easily allows you to do recursion

e.g.
Mega Group (rss aggregate of group1 and 2)
- group1
- group2


Then you could now do some nifty (should be plugin like) context analysis per blog group. For example you analize the group and check which words are most often mentioned (lucene indexed?) and somewhat getting a pulse of your blogosphere. Or maybe analize the links and hook up with del.icio.us for some tagging goodness, technorati plugin? feedburner? tag cloud? rojo like?

The grouping would also help a lot of RSS-feed-dependent-space-shifting mobile applications like quicknews.

Maybe such a tool already exist? Or does the future belongs to A.I. algorithms which you can directly ask "What's hot on the Filipino blogosphere?". I think the whole RSS thing has reached the point of irrevesible complexity and is in dire need of simplification. Simplifiying it would mean more room to focus on complicating other things. :D

Globe GPRS (includes MMS) services down for the moment. Hopefully they are fixing the long standing problem of incorrect WAP charges. If you are on Globe and would to like to use WAP (to browse wap sites outside of globe) better inform (call cust care) before attempting to do so, else each WAP card/page will be charged to you at Premium MMS download rates. It takes about minium of 2 days for them to fix your settings. It boggles the mind why the fix can't be applied to all subscribers. Oh well, such is life...

Some say WAP has gone the way of the dodos. Subplanted with real mobile browsers for smartphones. The truth is, its still the most cost effective way for doing mobile apps, not for mass adoption but for internal mobile applications. You get the benefit of forms (UI) that would work on dinosaur grade (but cheap) WAP capable phones like the Nokia 6310i. Added bonus you can cram more transactions per peso, which your CFO would really like.


Cmon' and WAP me, WAP me, WAP me...
Baby, I'm yours cmon' and WAP me...
I'm gonna save you some money, money, money...
So baby....
- M.Y.M.P. (Make Your Mobile Proud)

Standing Still

Standing Still
Originally uploaded by nocs.

What's on her mind? Looking for Ken? Pondering the faith of the Filipino nation? Hungry? Happy? Wondering if the legend of Pinochio was true? Waiting for a silicon implant? Dreaming of Adobo? Lusting for cup of freshly brewed coffee? Puzzled with Sex and the City?



Sigh... Walang magawa. Waiting for my lovey to make up her mind. Ahhh... Women...



Love is real, real is love...

-John Lennon

Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing - Google Video




A 1972 documentary of the pre-cursor of the internet the ARPANET. Checkout how they explained what it is via a chalkboard. A glimpse of the early ATM like machines! its nice to go back in time and see how things were. Fascinating.